Tuesday, March 29, 2016

One That Hansen Definitely Got Right

An article on Forbes.com a year ago gave the remarks of some hedge fund manager, Cliff Asness, about climate change.

He thought

The paper focuses on a chart of the Earth’s surface temperatures going back to 1880. Asness, who wrote the paper along with his co-worker Aaron Brown, does not deny that global temperatures are rising. But he says temperatures are rising at much slower rate than many suggest. What’s more, Asness and Brown say, based on the current pace of global warming, it will take another 500 years before the changes become a real problem.

Asness writes that he is not trying to deny the science of climate change, but that he is just looking at the data and what it says on its own. He offers other observations about climate change, including that the decline in Arctic sea ice or rising sea levels could just be the result of a mild increase in temperatures and not a sign that the world is about to get dramatically warmer.

But hey, Cliff Asness runs one of the world's largest hedge funds, so he must be an expert on everything, right, including all of science? Else how did he get rich?

Asness in fact provided his clients with very faulty science. The reporter of the piece asked James Hansen for his opinion on Asness's claims, and Hansen, a year ago, was spot on:

“I’m not sure about the idea of beating people about the head and shoulders, but within less than a year, you will look like complete fools (if you buy this crap)

Hansen is, of course, right.

Asness is wrong. Do you think he will recheck and rethink his views on global warming?